Watermelon wheat: extra juice = under-carbed?

[Joey_G]

I've brewed a handful of partial extract homebrews over the past year, and all have turned out great - but I think I may have made my first mistake with this last batch. Here's what happened:

I brewed 5 gallons of an American Wheat (Simply Beer from Midwest Supplies). After about two weeks in the bucket, I decided to add some fresh watermelon juice.

I ended up juicing the innards of an entire watermelon - pretty good size, too. I'd say medium to medium-large. I added all that juice to the bucket. It raised the volume by probably almost a gallon.

After about a month in the bucket, I decided to bottle. HERE is where I think I fouled up: I added the priming sugar to my bottling bucket, but I didn't take into account that extra volume of liquid.

My question: will my bottles now be under-carbed? This batch ended up producing about 7 (22oz) bottles worth of beer more than my usual batches - it was A LOT of extra beer.

They should be ready to drink in a few days. I just wanna know if I totally screwed this up, and if so, if they're somehow salvageable.

Thanks!

 

[RPh_Guy]

Yep, less priming sugar will result in less carbonation. It might still be fine though.

If you find that the level of carbonation is so low that you need to increase it, you would need to open the bottles and add more sugar. I would probably add a tiny amount of rehydrated/fresh yeast too in that case.

Cheers

 

[chickypad]

Yeah a gallon of juice is a lot. How much priming sugar did you actually use? For reference I use 4-5 cups of fresh juice in a 5 gal batch of Am wheat, is plenty for flavor but not too overwhelming.

 

[tgmartin000]

Basically your carbonation level will be 20% lower. So mmaybe slightly noticeable. how many volumes did you estimate?

 

[Joey_G]

Honestly, I wasn't thinking about the juice/liquid volumes at all. It didn't even occur to me until about a week before they were ready to crack. I've tried one and it still tasted a little green so I'm going to let them sit a few weeks more. I'll check the carb then. But either way - fizzy or flat - is fine to me, so long as it's got a bit of alcohol in it!